CTC Ainthinai Tree Plantation at Mayanabhoomi, Sholinganallur

Post Event Writeup – CTC Ainthinai - Tree Plantation at

Mayanabhoomi, Sholinganallur

Have you ever visited Burial Ground/Mayanabhoomi/Cremation Ground, other than during someone’s funeral time? When we ask this question to someone, the first thing comes to their mind is “Are you insane? Why would I visit that place where ghosts live? From our childhood onwards we have been preached that burial ground is the place one shouldn’t visit or go nearby. That’s the place where the souls of dead people who were buried/cremated there.

When Ainthinai had planned to concentrate on increasing the green cover within the city, we were desperately looking for a place where we can plant the saplings and nurture them. Through one of our friends Guru, we got introduced (???) to this place. As per Ainthinai’s thumb rule, we visit the place and check all the feasibility before conducting any event at that place. So we visited this place and got surprised to see such a vast area with a compounded wall and indeed with No green cover. We were so happy to find a wonderful place within city limits where we can plant more saplings and nurture them as trees.

As planned we sent an invitation for Tree Plantation at Sholinganallur Mayanabhoomi on ___ to CTC where we clearly mentioned we were going to plant the saplings in Mayanabhoomi/Cremation Ground/Burial Ground so please register if you were comfortable. And also recommended not to bring the kids for this event. After we posted the invite to CTC, we were expecting to get just around 10-15 volunteers including the regular volunteers. On our surprise, within a few days we received 40+ registrations and we were forced to close the registration which we wouldn’t be doing in most of the events due to shortage of volunteers. And one parents brought their kids too for this event. As per our plan, we Planted 130+ Saplings on our first phase with the help of 40+ volunteers. And this event was inaugurated by Sholinganallur MLA Aravind Ramesh.

Have you ever thought of a funny and happiest celebration at a Mayanabhoomi/Burial/Cremation Ground? We are exceptional. The same day two our friends Ravikumar and Parthiban were celebrating their Birthday. So do we need some other place to celebrate the Birthday? So we turned this Mayanabhoomi as a Birthday celebration place. We brought the cakes and it was really fun to see our joy over there.

A few days later our first event, we came to know there is another Mayanabhoomi which is bigger than this. We were so happy to see this vacant place where we can plant more trees within city limits. After our initial assessment, we found that there is a chance of water stagnant in this place. So we decide to wait for a months and planned to plant the saplings once the rain gets over. But due to the shortage of monsoon rains, the stagnant waster was dried up quickly and our plan was keep postponed due to other weekend scheduled events. Finally we decided to make use of Weekday mornings, where we would be waking up and going to office without any physical activity on. So we wanted to make use of the weekday morning.

We sent out the invitation to CTC for this weekday morning Tree Plantation Drive at a Mayanabhoomi which is a Second Phase. We received some good amount of responses. As mentioned the place has the chances of water stagnant, we took most care on choosing the saplings as well which will not be grazed by cattle. So we chose Pungai, Neem, Naaval, Neer Maruthu, Swargum. These saplings are by native and have more drought resistant and have more survival rates. As already were successful on transplanting the Pungai saplings which were grown abundantly in Sholinganallur areas, we transplanted the Pungai saplings and used them.

On this series, on one weekday, we did a small and quick saplings maintenance drive on this Mayanabhoomi. There was a small well in this Mayanabhoomi and we made use of this to water the saplings. Along with that we added organic manure and mulching to the saplings. Manure will be helpful to increase the growth of the saplings where in the mulching would be helpful to retain the water on the sapling pit and reduce the water evaporation. Over the period this added mulching would become the manure to these saplings.

So far, we had conducted 4 events at Mayanabhoomi where as One event at first Mayanabhoomi and three events at other Mayanabhoomi. As a result of this regular weekday events within the City, we got to receive good response from the participants and many regular volunteers are turning out to our event. We are targeting to Plant 500 Saplings on these two Mayanabhhomi before the monsoon rain gets over.

Our goal is ensure the Greener Mayanabhoomi/Burial/Cremation Ground where the departed Souls can be REST IN SHADE and not just REST IN PEACE alone.